It is an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion, but fol­low­ing the lat­est spate of mur­ders across Trinidad and To­ba­go over the week­end, this news­pa­per can on­ly come to the con­clu­sion that crime has the coun­try in a state of cri­sis.

If we were not sure of this, the at­tacks in Pe­tit Bourg in­volv­ing an en­tire fam­i­ly and an­oth­er man who was killed in Port-of-Spain are per­fect ex­am­ples of just how much the coun­try is be­ing sti­fled by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

In the first in­stance, the mur­der of Gillian Lewis ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing was re­lat­ed to the killing of her son, An­tho­ny Richards, on Thurs­day. Richards was one of sev­en men who were play­ing cards in Pe­tit Bourg when they were am­bushed — with Nikoli Mc­Don­ald al­so be­ing shot dead in that at­tack.

Lewis was killed when it is be­lieved her son’s as­sailants re­turned to kill her younger son and shot her too, even as her son man­aged to es­cape through a win­dow in their house al­though he was shot.

Hours af­ter­wards came the brazen mur­der of promi­nent Diego Mar­tin gang leader Ian "Tin Man" Stan­ley in his car along Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain - an in­ci­dent which caused fur­ther woes to cit­i­zens due to the traf­fic grid­lock it caused in the city.

Lewis and Stan­ley's killings were three of six that took place with­in a 20-hour span be­tween Fri­day and Sat­ur­day.

Joel Fer­nan­dez and Daniel John­son were mean­while killed in Cou­va and Gas­par­il­lo dur­ing home in­va­sions, a crime which seems to be on the rise in re­cent months with dire con­se­quences for home­own­ers.

Per­haps in an­oth­er sign that cit­i­zens are com­plete­ly fed-up with the spate of crimes, a vil­lager, armed with a shot­gun, walked up to Dil­lon Straughn and two oth­er ac­com­plices as they were al­leged­ly steal­ing cop­per ca­ble in Cara­pichaima on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and shot Straughn dead and in­jured his ac­com­plices.

These killings round­ed off what was one of the blood­i­est months in re­cent years in which over 50 peo­ple were killed.

In case act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds have not re­alised it yet, these lat­est in­ci­dents are a sure sig­nal of the run­away crime be­ing per­pe­trat­ed against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens by crim­i­nals who seem em­bold­ened by the fact that they are not be­ing brought be­fore the jus­tice sys­tem to pay the price for their heinous crimes.

Thus far, CoP Ja­cob has tried to ex­plain away the se­ri­ous crime rate by not­ing the lit­tle suc­cess they’ve had in some ar­eas. How­ev­er, the time for smart talk is long over. Cit­i­zens are at their wits end on the crime is­sue and some are so paral­ysed with fear that they have ini­ti­at­ed self-im­posed cur­fews to pro­tect them­selves. Of course, with the crim­i­nals com­ing right to peo­ple’s doorsteps, not even that is a safe­guard any­more.

So once again, this news­pa­per is call­ing on the col­lec­tive heads of the na­tion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies to get to­geth­er and come up with an ac­tion plan to rid the streets of the gangs and the guns — and we do not need new laws to achieve that.